Area residents showed up in force the last time there was a TCEQ hearing on the Guajolote Ranch issue in Austin, in 2024.
Oct. 8, 2025 – Lennar Corp.’s troubling compliance record with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality raises serious questions just two weeks away from the agency’s Oct. 22 hearing to decide a wastewater permit for its controversial Guajolote Ranch development in northwest Bexar County.
Notably, in 2019, it violated significant provisions of a settlement agreement – of the kind secretly reached with the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District for Guajolote Ranch – as well as TCEQ-issued permits to meet Clean Water Act requirements for 4S Ranch in Bulverde. By then, it was too late to secure permanent protection of recharge features that were violated.
Florida-based Lennar wants to build 2,900 homes on about 1,160 acres west of the intersection of Scenic Loop and Babcock roads north of Grey Forest that would release an average of 1 million gallons – and up to 4 million gallons – per day of treated sewage into the Helotes Creek watershed, threatening the region’s water quality.
While Lennar maintains its wastewater treatment plant to be operated by contractor Municipal Operations LLC of Cypress, Texas, would be advanced, even the most advanced plants are vulnerable to mechanical failures, power outages, operator errors, poor maintenance and extreme weather.
Eighty-one percent of the 48 Texas Hill Country municipal sewer plants that discharge to streams, creeks and rivers exceeded at least one pollutant limit from January 2017 through mid-2020 – with violations persisting an average of 188 days per plant – according to publicly available data from TCEQ and accessed by the Save Barton Creek Association for its report, “Pristine to Polluted: Sewage Problems & Solutions in the Texas Hill Country.”
Noting Lennar’s own questionable compliance record, “Why should they be trusted now?” asks Randy Neumann, chair of the steering committee of the Scenic Loop-Helotes Creek Alliance.
Earlier this year, in the San Antonio Express-News, Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance executive director Annalisa Peace recounted what happened at 4S Ranch in Bulverde:
“In 2016, the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance and the Bulverde Neighborhood Alliance signed a settlement agreement with Lennar for the 4S Ranch. The settlement called for, among other things, protection of a large recharge cave on the property and a stormwater drainage plan that would protect neighboring property owners.
“In September 2019, we learned that Lennar had violated significant provisions of this settlement agreement. Lots were sold within the buffer zone agreed upon to protect the cave, and stormwater culverts were built that would inundate the property of downstream neighbors.
“During the 4.1-inch storm of Oct. 24, 2019, stormwater laden with mud and debris from construction of the subdivision deluged a contiguous property; not only was Lennar in violation of the negotiated settlement, it was also in violation of its Texas Commission for Environmental Quality-issued permits for requirements to meet the Clean Water Act.
“Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance and Bulverde Neighborhood Alliance secured an agreement to relocate the development’s stormwater detention pond, along with payment of $175,000 from Lennar and its contractors, Pape-Dawson Engineers Inc. and SACC Inc., to remediate stormwater damage.
“There was no way, however, to secure permanent protection of the recharge features that were violated as the agreed-upon buffers were already encroached by newly built homes.”
Cave and porous karst limestone features also exist directly underneath Guajolote Ranch, where Municipal Operations filed the Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (TPDES) permit to be taken up by TCEQ Oct. 22 to dump treated sewage directly into Helotes Creek.
If that permit is approved, Lennar indicates it will “reuse” a portion of the effluent by applying it to the land’s surface. Faults, sinkholes, caves and other karst features here would allow rapid recharge, making pollution on the surface an immediate threat to groundwater.
Up to 4 million gallons a day of treated sewage applied to the ground would go into the Trinity Glen Rose Aquifer directly beneath – the drinking water source for immediate neighbors – and the contributing zone leading to the recharge zone a short distance away for the Edwards Aquifer, principal water source for up to 2.5 million residents across multiple counties.
A study by the highly respected Southwest Research Institute funded through the city of San Antonio’s Edwards Aquifer Protection Plan found that any type of wastewater system – including land application – from new large-scale residential developments that release treated effluent in the Helotes Creek watershed would “significantly degrade the watershed and the quality of water recharging the Edwards Aquifer.” That watershed accounts for up to 15% of the aquifer’s recharge.
The most common, and self-reported, failures cited in the Save Barton Creek Association report of the 48 Hill Country municipal sewer plants were for E. coli bacteria (which can harm people), and oxygen depletion and excess suspended solids (both of which can harm aquatic life).
A study of a similar karst formation in Canada recounted by renowned geoscientist George Veni to Alamo Area Master Naturalists and KSAT showed how contaminants from effluent applied to the surface of a farm reached area wells in a matter of days, killing seven people and making 2,300 others gravely ill. Said Dr. Veni, “We can die, and people have died, because of groundwater contamination in karst. We don’t want this to happen again.”
And Lennar’s wastewater plant would not be able to treat for persistent and dangerous compounds such as PFOS and PFAS “forever” chemicals, pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, over-the-counter medications, cosmetics, microplastics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria – serious pollutants that according to the U.S. Geological Survey and the EPA are present in effluent and nearly impossible to remove once they enter the aquifer’s karst system.
In Johnson County, Texas, in February 2025, sewer treatment byproducts known to contain PFAS were spread on a field. Soon, cattle and horses began dying. County officials eventually traced the cause to widespread groundwater contamination, with pollutant levels hundreds of times above EPA safety thresholds, triggering a countywide emergency.
EPA has made it clear: A plant like the one planned for Guajolote Ranch cannot fully remove all harmful contaminants from the waste stream.
The Scenic Loop-Helotes Creek Alliance knows of only two other plants operating in the San Antonio Pool of the Edwards Aquifer contributing zone, and from one of them, Leon Creek is now classified as an impaired stream.
“The San Antonio Water System’s Clouse/Dos Rios plant, which discharges into the San Antonio River south of the city, has experienced spills in four of the last five years,” Neumann said. “If one of the most well-funded and technologically advanced utilities in the country cannot prevent accidental discharges, why should we believe that a smaller company from Cypress, Texas, will fare any better?”
The Scenic Loop-Helotes Creek Alliance is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) group representing the largest neighborhood by square mile recognized by the San Antonio Neighborhood & Housing Services Department, a wide corridor along Scenic Loop Road from Bandera Road to north of Babcock Road.
Scenic Loop-Helotes Creek Alliance contacts:
Steve Lee, 210-415-2402, text; slee_78023@yahoo.com
Randy Neumann, SL-HCA steering committee chair, 210-867-2826, uhit@aol.com